


Once Upon A Time In The West

by nerddowell



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Lone Ranger Fusion, Alternate Universe - Western, Gen, Outlaw!Napoleon, Saloon Mistress!Gaby, Texas Ranger!Illya, The Lone Ranger (2013) - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 07:47:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14304090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/nerddowell
Summary: The saloon, as ever, was dark behind the shuttered windows keeping the heat out, and the swinging doors creaked as Illya made his way through, heeled boots clicking on the wood floors. Around him the saloon went quiet, shifty eyes glancing in his direction before skittering away like cockroaches as he threaded his way slowly towards the bar. Hat brims ducked as he passed, hiding faces, but he knew every man here by the curl of his hand around his bottle, or the hand of cards lying face-down on the sticky tables.The western AU from UNCLE, a.k.a. a woman has her jewellery stolen the exact same day as a stranger rolls up in town, and the local Texas Ranger is enlisted to help.





	Once Upon A Time In The West

**Author's Note:**

> _The Lone Ranger_ is probably my favourite film of all time and I watch it way too often, so naturally, writing a Western AU for these two idiots was only a matter of time. And you've no idea how much force of will it took to not have it be twin!Illya as Sherriff and Ranger both closing in on Napoleon.
> 
> I blame Armie Hammer entirely.

**Outside Oatman, Arizona  
1875**

Dry, scorched red earth crunched beneath the horse’s hooves as Napoleon clicked his tongue, steering the creature towards a scrubby-looking tree where he could at least tie the horse up and sit down for as much of a dinner as he could scrounge from the leftovers in his pack. He kept his guns holstered at his thighs, checking the spare on his bandolier, before sitting down. His hat was starting to get bleached by the sun, fading from a deep brown to a pale tan. He offered a spoonful of beans to the horse, who whuffled in his face with a look of disgust and ambled as far as the tied reins would allow him to graze at the paltry scrub by Napoleon’s feet.

‘Can’t say I blame you,’ Napoleon told him. ‘I’m getting mighty sick of beans myself.’

It had been over a month since his last adventure, the one that had chased him hard out of Texas and into Arizona. Well, her husband’s law men had, anyway. Seems the lady was more fond of her diamond earrings (whose proceeds had bought the beans Napoleon was currently consuming the last of) than of her husband (whom she had quite happily cuckolded with a handsome blue-eyed stranger from up north), but she was nevertheless none too happy to find them missing after the night was over.

Napoleon may have taunted the husband a little too much. Men didn’t like to be reminded that their wives had invited good-looking thieves into their bedrooms, that access to their coffers was all too readily given, and that, well, when he’s faced with something beautiful, he can’t help taking it. His mother had always told him his quicksilver tongue and brazen charms would get him into trouble; she just hadn’t been anticipating that trouble to follow him all the way out West the way it had.

He was all but skirting the Nevada-California border at the moment, watching a train belching black smoke as it traced a thundering line along the new tracks leading into Mesquite Creek. The great iron beast rumbled and roared like a thing alive along the valley floor, loud enough to draw every villain and miscreant within fifty miles, but Napoleon couldn’t see any other vultures – human or carrion – watching its passage. He had enough silver perhaps to buy a ticket back home, if he didn’t feel like the weeks of riding, but there were too many things awaiting him in Texas.

Things he’d spent his whole life riding away from.

* * *

The horse died at Six Mile Crossing.

He didn’t bury it, instead stripping the carcass down to get at the meat, hanging it up to dry for jerky over the branches of a deadwood as he camped out beneath its barren limbs, staring at the stars. The draw to return to Texas was strong, a lasso around his ribs, tugging him back to the town he’d taken his first squalling breaths in. Not that he was going back for any sentimental reason, of course. Purely because there was plenty of ranch work to be found in the area, which would give him a respectable job if not the kind of lifestyle he preferred, and, well, he couldn’t exactly roll up in town proclaiming his intent to continue with his current profession.

He managed to hitch a ride on a wagon to Nothing (an accurate name if ever he heard one, without even a saloon to its name), where he rustled a horse from a local ranch and, despite having been bitten for his trouble, rode the two days into Phoenix and managed to catch the train without the need for greasing too many palms.

His carriage was full of the religious types he hated, Baptists wrapped up in black from jaw to heel. He took more than a little pleasure in liberating the sternest gentleman of his watch as they rattled through old El Paso and smiled when the man opposite praised its beauty as he checked the time at Marathon. Other than absent-minded kleptomania, there was little to entertain him on the train, and he took to watching the country roll by through the windows, the sore pull of his heart lessening the closer he got to home.

The train arrived at the station with a screech of its brakes, chuffing smoke all over the ladies’ dresses and staining the air grey with soot. The heat, although cooler than the inside of the train car, was oppressive, the sun blinding, and he tipped the brim of his hat down to shade his eyes as he strolled off the station platform towards the only place he knew he’d find a warm welcome – the saloon.

* * *

Illya was aware the Americans neither liked nor trusted him. He’d not asked to be ripped from his family, his homeland, and transplanted here by what seemed like no more than the will of the wind that had carried him, and yet here he was. Too many years in a navy that hadn’t scratched his itch for more – whatever more was – and he’d found himself here, inexplicably, in a tiny and rotten Texas town with a gleaming badge on his chest, more through sheer pigheaded stubbornness than any favouritism on the locals’ part. He spoke the language well enough, although he’d yet to learn the drawling way they seemed to pull words from their mouths like unspooling strings. Perhaps it was for the best; people tended to listen to a harsh, markedly foreign accent and a strong arm more than the local syrupy drawl.

He was sat in his office going through correspondence, none of which was of any interest, when the door burst open and a hysterical older woman stumbled through the door, flushed and lacking one delicate lace glove.

‘Mister, oh, Mister, ain’t you gonna help me – I been robbed–’

‘What happened?’ he asked, pulling her out a chair and helping her sit down. She mopped at her face with a handkerchief, pressing her free hand to her heaving bosom and complaining of the palpitations.

‘My heart’s a-beatin’ like there’s no tomorrow – oh, sir, my jewels – my mama’s necklace, my daddy’s watch-chain – all been stolen! Like they weren’t even there!’

Illya did his best to calm her, even offering her a sip of whiskey, which she gulped from the tumbler as though it were air, and managed to draw it out of her that she’d been out on a walk with a gentleman – chaperoned, of course, sir, she wasn’t no scarlet woman – and the gentleman had been real flannel-mouthed (this he had needed translating, which his deputy helpfully chipped in with), so much so that the victim had been quite taken with him, and after a charming goodbye at the gate of her house, she’d found herself minus her mother’s pearls. Her father’s watch-chain, there was no sign anywhere of.

Illya promised to investigate, and left the woman in the station with another, much larger, tumblerful of whiskey before heading to the saloon. Any newcomers in town, the landlady there was bound to have heard of, and he was fond of the straight-talking Miss Teller. (A thousand times he’d been asked to call her Gaby, and a thousand times more he would have to be asked before he even considered doing it.)

* * *

The saloon, as ever, was dark behind the shuttered windows keeping the heat out, and the swinging doors creaked as Illya made his way through, heeled boots clicking on the wood floors. Around him the saloon went quiet, shifty eyes glancing in his direction before skittering away like cockroaches as he threaded his way slowly towards the bar. Hat brims ducked as he passed, hiding faces, but he knew every man here by the curl of his hand around his bottle, or the hand of cards lying face-down on the sticky tables. Gaby, dressed in her customary canary yellow, was waiting with one hand on the bar, an eyebrow raised.

‘Well, well, Mr Ranger. What can I do for you today?’

‘A thief,’ Illya said bluntly, and several heads around him rose, ears perked in interest. Drunks were as bad as old maids for gossip. ‘And of course, as the saloon mistress, you’re the first port of call for any newcomers in town.’

‘Might be as I’ve noticed one or two.’

‘Any-’ He tried to remember the word, ‘-flannel-mouthed types? Black hair, blue eyes.’

‘Real dude in here not two minutes ago,’ a rancher’s son said from his position at the bar, snorting with distaste. ‘Easterner, could tell by the look.’ He hawked and spat on the floor, as though to show his opinion of this interloper. ‘Tried charmin’ Gaby here-’

‘Miss Teller,’ Illya corrected as if by rote, and Gaby rolled her eyes at him.

‘-Miss Teller, anyhow she ain’t havin’ none of it, and he don’t have the silver for more than a soda, so out he goes, and the devil can take him.’

Illya glanced at Gaby, who confirmed the story with a shrug of her shoulders and winked at Illya.

‘He wasn’t much my sort.’

Illya, who was painfully aware that Gaby knew about and occasionally entertained the thought of reciprocating the feelings he was too shy to voice having for her, ignored the wink, although he could feel a blush climbing up his cheeks.

‘Aw, the Ranger’s gone red as a whore’s petticoat,’ the rancher teased. ‘Ain’t nobody can resist Miss Gaby, and the law ain’t no different!’

Laughter rose around the saloon, and Illya clenched his fists, tamping down the urge to strangle the young man. He was deep in his cups after all, and there was little harm done in truth. Still, their laughter needled at him as he strode, heavy-footed, out of the saloon and crossed the square. He walked until he could hear it no longer, and rested in the shade by the general store for a minute or two to pretend that any residual blush was the touch of the sun on his fair cheeks.

* * *

Napoleon wasn’t so stupid as to sell the necklace and the watch-chain in the same town. He rode out so far as he could in a day and sold the goods to a pawnshop out in the next county before swaggering to the saloon with pockets jingling and a smile on his face. There was a cat-wagon sat outside, a couple of girls in their bright dresses and brighter rouge sat out front swinging their legs and calling to the men passing. A woman stopped to hurl some tart invective at them, and one made a gesture before laughing her away, careless and challenging, and it was her that caught Napoleon’s eye.

Curvy as a soda bottle, with yellow hair and skin like alabaster beneath her slightly soiled parasol, she gave him a wink which he returned, subtly flashing her a silver and watching the chink of light pass over her face. She held out her hand to him, and he stepped her down from the wagon like the gentleman his mother had raised him to be, and she led him upstairs after only a brief talk with the madam.

After, he clambered back on his horse, clicked his tongue, and rode off back to Bandera, with a pleasant ache in his loins entirely different from the soreness of a day in the saddle, and a new silver earring tucked in the handkerchief pocket of his coat.

His arrival didn’t go unnoticed. In fact, there was a hulking – there was no other word for it – blond watching him from the shadows by the county Rangers station, arms folded against his expansive chest, and eyes narrowed beneath the brim of a white hat. Napoleon offered him a jaunty wave and jumped down from his horse, leading the animal to a watering trough where he tied him up before sauntering over to the other man.

‘Any recommendations as to where to spend the night?’

‘What are you doing here? I have not seen your face around this town before.’

‘A foreign Ranger. Never seen of one of those before.’

‘I asked you a question,’ the other man said in a hard voice, arms still folded and eyes like flint. Napoleon shrugged.

‘Just passing through,’ he said with his most charming smile, and the Ranger grunted before turning away and heading back inside the station.

**Author's Note:**

> I will confess that Wild Western geography is not my strongest suit. I have taken names of famous Wild West towns and plotted the walking (and, presumably, riding routes) over Google Maps, but I've no idea what towns had railroads and which didn't, so please suspend your disbelief when it comes to that. Sorry.


End file.
